THE ART OF POSSIBILITY - Sweet Adelines International

Sweet Adelines International Page 1
IES 2006
Thursday, 3501 Period 5, 3602 Period 6
Saturday, 5301 Period 3
THE ART OF POSSIBILITY
A Sampling of Ben and Rosamund Zander Wisdom
KEY CONCEPTS:
1. The art of leadership is about a new way of being
2. Speak possibility: Recognize conversations in the downward spiral and enroll people in
the journey to radiating possibility.
3. Everyone can lead from wherever she stands!
4. Lead by making others more powerful. (The conductor does not make a sound!)
5. Enroll every voice in the vision.
6. Look for shining eyes. What am I doing that keeps them from shining?
7. Quiet the voice in your head that says, “I can’t do it!”
8. Everyone gets an “A” (Give people a possibility to live into, not an expectation to live up to.)
9. Invent a new game: “I am a contributor.” Ask yourself, “How will I contribute today?”
10. Never doubt the capacity of the people you lead to accomplish whatever you dream for them.
11. The leader is the Relentless Architect of the Possibility that Others Can Be.
12. First rule of leadership…Remember Rule # 6!
BOOK:
The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
“Transforming Professional and Personal Life”, Penguin Books, 2000
Objective Of Book:
To provide the reader the means to lift off from that world of struggle and sail into a vast world of
possibility
The authors’ harmoniously interwoven perspectives provide a deep sense of the powerful role
that the notion of possibility can play in every aspect of life. Through uplifting stories, parables, and
personal anecdotes, the Zanders invite us all to become passionate communicators, leaders, and
performers whose lives radiate possibility into the world.
Points to Ponder….
• Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances & new pathways come into view.
• It is dangerous to have our musicians so obsessed with competition because they will find it
difficult to take the necessary risks with themselves to be great performers.
The Art of Possibility, Benjamin and Rosamund Zander
Kathy Carmody
kkcarmody@earthlink.net
,

• Regarding possibility thinking: Virtually everybody wakes up in the morning with the
unseen assumption that life is about the struggle to survive and get ahead in a world of
limited resources.
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• The lesson I learned is that the player (musician) who looks the least engaged may be the most
committed member of the group. A cynic, after all, is a passionate person who does not
want to be disappointed again.
• The answer to the mystery of stage nerves turned out to be the same as the secret of life:
It’s all a matter of invention.
• In the game of contribution you can wake up each day and bask in the notion that you are a
gift to others. You instantly shift the contest from one of survival to one of opportunity
for growth.
• Naming oneself and others as a contribution produces a shift away from self-concern and
engages us in a relationship with others that is an arena for making a difference.
• Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not
understand how or why.
• There is no such thing as “bad weather”….only inappropriate clothing!
• A director can be easily seduced by the public’s extraordinary attention to her unique offering
and come to believe that he/she is personally superior. A leader who feels she is superior
is likely to suppress the voices of the very people on whom she must rely to deliver her
vision alive and kicking.
• How dispiriting it is for singers when a director, as often happens, gets angry and blames the
chorus when she herself made the mistake, in the vain hope that nobody will have noticed.
• A monumental question for leaders in any organization to consider is: How much greatness
are we willing to grant people?
• BE the board on which the game is played.
• Ben Zander quoting Nelson Mandela quoting Marianne Williamson in A Return to Love:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous—
actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people
won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine; we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.”
The Art of Possibility, Benjamin and Rosamund Zander
Kathy Carmody
kkcarmody@earthlink.net
,